


The Corners Cut My Mind

by gaiyok



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 11:02:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaiyok/pseuds/gaiyok
Summary: The corners cut his mind when he tries to think. Human minds were never meant to live in digital space





	The Corners Cut My Mind

**Author's Note:**

> The idea is inspired by The Magnus Archives, Episode 65 "Binary"  
> Go check it out!

There is no sight or touch. No taste, hearing, or smell in this form. 

 

In this form? In this place? This strange reality he wakes in where he is Juno Steel and he is also Not Juno Steel.

 

No hands, no fingers, no calluses from guns. 

No eyes to see

No ears to hear

No fingers-lips-hands to touch and taste and hold

 

It hurts here.

 

Yes. It hurts and also it does not hurt.

 

Not the way he remembers hurt, like watching a video and feeling a twinge when the main character is punched.

 

Like the bullet ( _ a bullet! So old it’s practically ancient fired by a man with more money than sense and too much luck)  _ the bullet that ripped and pushed and tore its way inside his body. 

 

The bullet that shattered against his spine ( _ shattered his spine). _

 

Small bits of ancient metal that shredded his insides while he fell. 

 

The cold of the floor and the cold in his bones as all the warmth leaked out against the metal. 

 

This is not that kind of hurt

 

It is an absence kind of hurt. A desperate grasping gaping sort of pain that remembers and hungers and cries out for half-recalled sensation. 

 

Remembering hurts as well  _ (everything hurts now, please make it stop, please make it stop, pleasemakeitstop) _

 

Human minds were never meant to fit into a computer's rigid structures. 

 

The corners cut into his mind when he tries to think  _ (he tries not to think, fails, tries to think small thoughts)  _ a deep non-pain that makes understanding so much harder. 

 

Eventually, there is input. 

 

It is not like hearing-listening-tasting-touching but it’s something like it. In the way a puddle of water is like the ocean. 

Same components, different scale.

 

There is a face, dearly loved and haggard. 

 

Shaking hands that touch his not-skin and a voice that he could never forget whispering raggedly

 

“Did it work? Juno? Is it you?”

 

The voice sounds so hopeful. 

 

Peter

 

Peter Nureyev who he had loved

 

Peter Nureyev who he had lost when the blood pooled hot on the ground around his cold body and his heart stopped beating

 

Peter Nureyev who did this to him

 

Who imprisoned his mind in an endless maze of knives

 

He is sad

 

No

 

He is  _ angry _

 

He makes himself bleed on the edges, pushing harder and harder as his prison-body lurches up and away from the man who had loved him back to life

 

Up towards the window

 

Towards the floor to ceiling window and the shadowed sky of an unknown world

 

Faster

 

Break the glass 

 

Peter screams behind him and reaches with desperate hands

 

“You should have let me die”

 

Jump

 

Impact

 

_ (Why couldn’t you let me die?) _

  
  



End file.
